Week Six - Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake

At the start of the year, one of my friends decided to start up a baking club, where we all go round to each others' houses and teach everyone new recipes. As well as being a fun idea, it also seemed to fit in well with my resolution!

The first meeting was last Friday, and to kick things off we were all tasked with making a Chocolate Cheesecake. I'd made Chocolate Cheesecake once before, but it was a diet recipe, and didn't really turn out too well. This time I decided to forget about the calories, but only make a small amount so that there wasn't lots of leftovers for me to eat afterwards!

I knew I wanted a new recipe for it, but on doing a quick google search there seemed to be a lot of options out there, although none of the ones I looked at really grabbed me. I had a bit of a think about what I wanted to do, and liked the idea of doing some sort of marbled milk and white chocolate version, but couldn't find a recipe. However, when I was buying my £1 cookbooks the weekend before last, I found a chocolate recipe book, and in it was the exact thing I was looking for a no bake marbled chocolate cheesecake!

Aside from forgetting to buy caster sugar, and having to leave work early on Friday so that I could get home early to make and set the cheesecake before heading to the baking club, it was very easy to make - a standard digestive/ butter mix for the base, and then philadelphia, cream, sugar and chocolate for the toppings. I made 2 bowls of chocolate topping - one white, one milk, and then just spooned them on to my base one over the other, before swirling everything together with a knife. Simple!

There were four of us at the baking club who had made cheesecakes, and all of them were totally different. As well as mine we had cheesecake cupcakes, a more traditional baked chocolate cheesecake and a chocolate orange cheesecake with a pastry style base. All were delicious! We had a bit of a competition to pick the best out of the bunch, which was a very difficult decision. In the end I came out joint first together with the more traditional style cake, and was very pleased with the results!

I think this has been my favourite recipe so far, definitely one to make again, although not too often given the major calorific value!